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Nigeria Says $15b Stolen

Nigerian Vice President Yemi Osinbajo said about $15 billion was lost by the previous administration to fraudulent security spending, almost three times more than was earlier estimated by the government, Bloomberg reported. Osinbajo, who along with President Muhammadu Buhari defeated Goodluck Jonathan in elections last year on an anti-corruption campaign, said the figure was only discovered a few days ago, dwarfing the previous estimate of $5.5 billion allegedly misappropriated from contracts to buy defense equipment to fight the Islamist militant group Boko Haram. The amount “is more than half of the current foreign reserves of the country,” Osinbajo said in a statement on Tuesday. “When you look at the sheer amount of money that has been embezzled, the sheer amount of money lost from any of these various cases of corruption, you will find that far too much has been lost.” Nigeria’s political system has been dogged by graft since independence from Britain in 1960.